Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Is meritocracy sustainable? This, and a true story about a gay murder mystery go onto my reading list; also, more on demographic winter

Here are a couple more for my reading list:

“Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy” (2013),
by NYC professor Chris Hayes (Broadway Books) views individualized moral values
based on meritocracy, as valued by the libertarian right, as
unsustainable. Vox has a post-dated
review today by Henry Farrell, link here. Sounds like Twilight of the Gods? One trouble with meritocracy is that parents
tend to pass it on by class (also an argument of Posner in “Our Kids”). But is the moral sustainability of a free
society the “sum” of the moral compasses of all its free individuals, or of
their karmas – and of their willingness to walk in one another’s shoes,
sometimes?

The Vox review notes the irony of Trump's appeal to those left behind -- the racism and tribalism, the "take care of your own" -ism that riles David Brooks, despite the idea that Trump himself benefits loudly from inherited wealth and privilege.

The second book is a non-fiction mystery that sounds worthy
of Dateline, “Cobra Killer: Gay Porn Murder, and the Manhunt to Bring the
Killers to Justice”, by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, which appears to
be self-published on the hard copy (paper) which arrived today.ReelAffirmations is showing a film “Cobra Killer” which a schedule problem will
keep me from seeing, but I hope there will be a DVD or Netflix or Amazon video
soon. (I also hope to find a video for “Retake” as
I had a conflict tonight.) The story
concerns the murder of Bryan Charles Kocsis aka Bryan Phillips aka Brent
Corrigan, as explained on imdb here. I’ll try to get to this book soon (which
can work about as well to convey the newsworthiness of the story as a
film).

Update: Oct. 20

I picked up Jonathan Last's "What to Expect when No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster". 2013, from Encounter Books, paper. The book will get into why immigration is not a good substitute for having your own children (in the U.S.). Will this be the "more White babies" argument? About demographic winter, as Carlson and Mero call it? The last chapter is titled "How to Make Babies" and an earlier chapter is "SEX! (and Maybe Marriage").

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Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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